nners. Presently, as you pass slowly on your
way--for in a garden who would go quickly?--you come upon the little
church of S. Martino a Mensola, built, as I think indeed, so lovely it
is, by Brunellesco, on a little rising ground above a shrunken stream,
and that is Mensola on her way to Arno. She lags for sure, because, lost
in Arno, she will see nothing again so fair as her own hills.

[Illustration: OUTSIDE THE GATE]

S. Martino a Mensola is very old, for it is said that in the year 800 an
oratory stood here, dedicated to S. Martino, and that il Beato Andrea di
Scozia, Blessed Andrew of Scotland, then archdeacon to the bishopric of
Fiesole, rebuilt it and endowed a little monastery, where he went to
live with a few companions, taking the rule of St. Benedict. Carocci
tells us that about 1550 it passed from the Benedictines to certain
monks who already had a house at S. Andrea in Mercato Vecchio of
Florence. In 1450 the monastery returned to Benedictines, coming into
the possession of the monks of the Badia. Restored many times, the
church was rebuilt in the fifteenth century, it may well be by
Brunellesco; the portico, restored in 1857, was added in the sixteenth
century. Within, the church is charming, having a nave and two aisles,
with four small chapels and a great one, which belonged to the Zati
family. And then, not without a certain surprise, you come here upon
many pictures still in their own place, over the altars of what is now a
village church. Over the high altar is a great ancona divided into many
compartments: the Virgin with our Lord, S. Maria Maddalena, S. Niccolo,
St. Catharine of Alexandria, S. Giuliano, S. Amerigo of Hungary, S.
Martino, S. Gregorio, S. Antonio, and the donor, Amerigo Zati. Carocci
suggests Bernardo Orcagna as the painter; whoever he may have been, this
altarpiece is beautiful, and the more beautiful too since it is in its
own place. In the Gherardi Chapel there is an Annunciation given to
Giusto d'Andrea, while in another is a Madonna and Saints by Neri di
Bicci. In the chapel of the Cecchini there is a fine fifteenth-century
work attributed to Cosimo Rosselli. The old monastery is to-day partly
the canonica and partly a villa. Following the stream upwards, we pass
under and then round the beautiful Villa I Tatti that of old belonged to
the Zati family whose altarpiece is in S. Martino, and winding up the
road to Vincigliata, you soon enter the cypress woods. All the way to
your